


hunting sheep in my sleep (no, I don’t count them)

by dieuclaw



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: 800 million Cardassian civilians died for this, Alien Biology, Dubious Consent, Episode: s05e14 In Purgatory's Shadow, Episode: s05e15 By Inferno's Light, M/M, Missing Scene, Other, Vaginal Fingering, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:14:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29613435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dieuclaw/pseuds/dieuclaw
Summary: “The Vorta could be gluttonous, alcoholic sex maniacs!”
Relationships: Dukat/Weyoun
Comments: 15
Kudos: 29





	hunting sheep in my sleep (no, I don’t count them)

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING for Occupation apologetics and for ripping off CLAMP wholesale. The views and opinions expressed by the characters in this work of derivative fiction do not reflect the views of the author, etc.
> 
> Title is by Sleigh Bells - Crucible

“You seek the protection of the Dominion.”

It is a statement, not a question. The Founder’s voice is toneless, and from what Dukat can see in the long shadows of daybreak on this ocean planet, there is no expression on its blank clay-doll face, nothing but hooded eyes and skin like carved soap. _The people of the Dominion worship these aberrations as Gods,_ Dukat thinks, and he can’t for the life of him understand why. 

Cardassia being, of course, a rigorously atheist Union. Enlightenment is found in service to the state. Fealty is freedom. Subjugation is liberation. Contradiction is truth.

“Yes,” he answers honestly. “Not just for myself, I assure you. I am here as a representative of my great nation—“

“Cardassia,” the Founder cuts him off. “Spanning forty-three, previously forty-four, planets governed by a civilian assembly. Resources have been allocated almost exclusively to the development of the military arm, which has been bound and fettered by your Alpha Quadrant neighbors, has it not? Your people starve because of lines drawn on star-charts. You have been abandoned.”

Painful, to hear what he already knows about the Federation trade embargoes.

“...and you. You have no hope of securing your empire with one... Klingon ship.”

Dukat lifts his head proudly. His problem has always been that he cares too much. The occupation was best for Cardassia _and_ Bajor. Take a little pride in the fall. Et cetera.

“Cardassia needs a strong hand now that the Obsidian Order is out of the way,” he says. “Or she _will_ chew her own tail until she dies.”

Implicitly: _thank you, for taking care of the Order for me, for all of us. The Cardassian Union owes you one. Let me buy you a kanar?_

But the Founders don’t eat or drink, and higher echelons of the Dominion seem to have little use for systems of hard currency or credit. This unsettles Dukat more than he’ll ever admit. The Founders only _need_ one shitty secret planet to call their own, they _want_ absolute dominion (eponymously) over the galaxy, they _have—_

“The Dominion is not your deterrent,” the Founder turns its head, slightly too far to the side, like a tytoxl bat. Dukat has seen changelings emulate other races flawlessly—he is sure this one could just as easily choose to look like a Cardassian Legate—but it seems to be unconcerned with aesthetics. “The Jem’hadar are not mercenaries, Skrain Dukat. Be careful with what you are asking for.”

“ _I_ will make Cardassia strong again,” Dukat says, blinking away the use of his given name and a clever retort about how the Jem’hadar are manufactured the same as any third-rate disruptor, “I thought the Dominion would be interested in an allegiance with the most formidable armada in the Alpha Quadrant. If I’m wrong, I will take my offer to the Federation. They trust me, you know.”

It’s an empty threat. A joke, really. Overfamiliar. The Federation has its own definition of order, and it involves taxes and an old Earth relic called the Geneva Convention. The Founder makes an unidentifiable noise, and Dukat realizes it’s _laughing._

Well, he talks to Commander Sisko all the time. He knows how to deal with Gods, false and otherwise.

“The Dominion does not entertain allies. You will be joined, one way or another.”

Dukat has made his choice. He could argue semantics all day, but it’s been a long trip flying blind and the salt air is itching under his scales and the guls _will_ follow him if he returns, triumphant, with a Jem’hadar army at his back. He is not above wearing puppet strings to keep up appearances. He is not above anything at all, and he knows what’s best for Cardassia, so he decides to hear what he wants to hear. “Very good. Where do I sign?”

  
  


#

  
  


The Founders keep him at the base for seventeen hours. It is a flight deck and Jem’hadar barracks constructed on a platform above the amber water, weatherworn and rusted, and there is nothing else on the horizon all the way around, as far as Dukat can see. He asks if the planet has a name, but the Founder just looks at him as if he’s dropped dead.

There is nothing to sign, no formalities. The Founders have no _need_ for bureaucracy or ceremony or anything approaching Cardassian levels of record-keeping. Dukat is left a little breathless by the suddenness of it, how it feels as if he’s etched the future of his entire world in stone, as unchanging and as implacable as the past. _The Pr—Sisko’s wormhole aliens would have much to say about that._ He remembers something Naprem said once, and he grips the platform railing all the tighter, plumed tail lashing like a flag. 

The people of the Dominion worship the changelings as Gods. He thinks back to the Alpha Quadrant: leave it to the Federation to find an anomaly and waste no time appointing one of their own as _Emissary_ to Bajor, to have the foresight to wield backwater superstitions as deftly as an interrogator’s scalpel. If the Union had gotten there first, fifty, sixty years ago—

Well, there’s still time. 

Dukat watches as the sea crests, and liquid amber becomes foam becomes feathers the color of fresh plaster. The Founder has taken the form of an alien raptor with a wingspan broad as a skimmer’s and a bald, beaked head. There are no birds native to Cardassia Prime, but Dukat once saw a Bajoran fish-eagle try to catch a snake at the edge of a flooded mine in Dahkur. The snake strangled the fish-eagle and swallowed it whole.

  
  


#

  
  


The poeticism of commandeering a ship called a _Bird-of-Prey_ is not lost on him. Dukat and the Founder beam back together, lifted by the red dazzle of the cargo transporter straight into the Bird-of-Prey’s hold, and his Vorta escort dips her head as the static clears.

“Founder. You honor us with your presence,” she says. The Vorta, born politicians, _love_ a good ceremony. And then, to Dukat: “Welcome to the Dominion.”

The Founder is bipedal again, Vorta-sized. It ignores her. “You may have loose ends to tie up back home,” it tells Dukat, and he nods. _Cauterize_ would be the better word. 

He has the feeling he won’t be discussing field strategy with a God. 

“Anqet 2 will escort you to your wormhole,” the Founder says. “A specialized Vorta Ambassador to the Cardassian Union has been supplied. We suggest you use the journey to acquaint yourself with it, as it will be your point of contact with the Dominion for as long as it lives.”

Anqet 2 has been over to the Bird-of-Prey for dinner every evening, and he has taught her to play kotra, and she hasn’t taken her ship’s purple railbanks off the Bird-of-Prey for three weeks. Her Jem’hadar are placid, close to docile, and Dukat knows it’s because they trust her to give them a hell of a scrap when _she_ decides it’s necessary. That, and the ketracel-white. He can’t imagine how a _Specialized Vorta_ _Ambassador_ _to the Cardassian Union_ might behave. 

Everything out of the Gamma Quadrant is repulsive. No Cardassian would need drugs to satisfy his loyalty to the state. 

The Founders’ planet has no name, and Gul Skrain Dukat’s Bird-of-Prey has no name, either.

  
  


#

  
  


The Captain's quarters on a Klingon Bird-of-Prey wouldn’t pass for the brig on a _Galor-_ class ship. Dukat has knocked out a bulkhead and torn up the Klingon furniture—Cardassians are too long for Klingon beds—and what’s left? A futon rolled against the wall, the army-issue duffle he lives out of, a handful of isolinear rods with holovids of seven of his eight children. 

And, now, a shiny, oblong black box, like a torpedo casing or the cheap cartons the Bajorans burn their dead in. Anqet 2 presumably beamed it over while he was on the surface. Dukat stalks around it with a critical eye, hands behind his back, tail swaying. He should sleep, he should sleep until they’re back on the other side of the wormhole, but the _thrill_ of the day hasn’t left him yet. How many days in a man’s life truly matter, after all? 

_This_ matters. This is the start of something, big enough for his whole heart. 

This is _Cardassia’s future._

There is a touch-screen latch on the box. Lavender. Dukat presses two claws to it and is gratified when the lid splits down the center and slides away, noiselessly, like the windows on a skimmer. 

He forgets to breathe, for a moment. The Vorta inside is naked, unconscious in an orange bio-gel suspension with the limp, dewy look of something just born. It is not the first naked Vorta he’s seen—Anqet 2 has been hospitable in more ways than one—and he is struck by how exactly similar they all are. The same build, the same mammalian skin, the same shock of not-quite-black hair. No external genitalia but symmetrical, well-defined features and a sharp jawline that continues up to the unmistakably ridged ears. No tail.

Every Vorta is very beautiful. Dukat finds himself crouched like a boy digging for taspar eggs, one hand on each lengthwise side of the box for balance. And then he glances to the door, and stands, and turns the bolt that will keep it shut in the event of an electrical failure. 

The Bird-of-Prey was not built for comfort, but because of the configuration of the eleventh-generation Klingon warp system it stays warm, and the floor is solid. Dukat unrolls the futon and lifts the Vorta from the box, laying it out on the thin bedding like a corpse to be embalmed. On Cardassia, the loyal dead are mummified, their blood drawn and their final skin treated and wrapped in linen and komay gum forever, a splendid science—it’s nothing like what happens on Bajor, where only members of the unclean caste are permitted to touch a dead body.

(Traitors, of course, are left for the voles. Dukat has a finger bone from his father’s body on a cord: he picked it off the street like a dirty coin.)

The Vorta doesn’t have a pulse. This in itself is not concerning. Anqet 2 has no pulse, either. It is warm to the touch, like a Bajoran, or perhaps running a little hotter. Dukat traces his hands over the Vorta‘s body, claws flexed up to avoid breaking skin the way he’d learned to be gentle with Naprem. He _did_ love her. 

(With Naprem, he always felt as if he was doing the right thing.)

He remembers something else and ducks into the commode, emerging minutes later with his claws clipped, shedding his armor like an old skin. The Vorta is naked, it feels like the right thing to do. There are probably related interrogation techniques, any number of reasons to cultivate a false sense of security, but Dukat wouldn’t know. He has never been an interrogator. He prefers to get what he wants by other means.

(By any means necessary.)

He continues his examination of the newly engineered thing on his futon, almost aimless in his specificity. The reptilian ear-pits, how he can feel the bone that gives the ears their shape, just under the skin. The cartilaginous Human nose. A supple mouth with pointed, hollow teeth, rather like a Trill’s: Dukat pries it open with two and then three fingers, feeling for the violet tongue and the hard, round venom glands tucked bulbously near the uvula. Its hair is soft, _fluffy_ , not like a Cardassian mane, which is silken and prone to grease like candle wax.

There are no breasts to speak of, just an odd dip in the chest and fewer ribs than Dukat would expect. No navel, but a knot of scar tissue at the base of the neck between two vertebrae. These things are grown in tubes. It takes eight-hundred-eighty-six days, a rather more delicate process than the Jem’hadar, because it is required of a Vorta to think, and to practice diplomacy, and to be ten steps ahead while coming about on an enemy ship during combat. Anqet 2 is very good at kotra: he suspects she let him win.

The skull protecting that carefully constructed brain feels as fragile as a sand shell. And these are the masters that control the Jem’hadar! Dukat shifts forward, hefting the Vorta’s hips up for easy access, studying the faint muscles of its thighs and the slit between them, still slick with bio-gel. His tongue darts to wet his lips, he is breathing shallowly, and he slides an exploratory claw between the Vorta’s legs. It is hot, and soft, and the Vorta finally, _finally,_ tightens around him. There is an exhale, and a furrowing of the brow, and it bares its teeth.

The eyes, when they open, are the bright, bruised color of the Badlands. The Vorta sits up, propping itself up on an elbow and reaching for Dukat’s wrist with the other hand, and Dukat’s blunted claw slips deeper. A low growl rumbles in his chest, and the Vorta smiles, scintillating.

“Gul Dukat,” he says—and this, the voice, is what determines the perfunctory gender of any Vorta—“It’s _wonderful_ to meet you.”

  
  


#

  
  


Dukat wants to break every carbon-black bone in the Vorta’s body, easily, like crushing the void-fill used for packing disruptor crates, like snapping the neck of a fat taspar for lunch with a side of imported _moba,_ or _apples._ Humans have a way with fruit, he likes that about Deep Space 9.

(He’ll miss the Federation replicators.)

Instead, he sinks his teeth into the Vorta’s trapezius, tasting the bitter slick of bio-gel and the hot burst of raw meat without blood (because Vorta do not have a pulse, and they do not bleed), and the Vorta makes a lovely sound. He curls into Dukat, clutching at him, fine head bowed against Dukat’s chest as Dukat pushes a second oiled claw inside of him, spreading him apart. There is the give, the tear, wider: Dukat’s hand is so much larger than his prUt, he is so much taller than the Vorta, it hurts, he can tell, but the Vorta is riding his hand, rubbing himself off like a senseless animal, so Dukat adjusts his angle and massages the sensitive flesh that peaks in ridges along the inside of him. It’s like another mouth, another set of newborn teeth.

The Vorta comes quickly, and then _again_ , _harder._ His dancing eyes open a little wider. His fingers outline a tattoo down Dukat’s hip to his groin, a design that makes Dukat see black for a second, and how did he know to do that? 

“My name is Weyoun,” the Vorta says, as though this is a traditional reception. Perhaps it is. His eyes are heliotrope glass, empty, unfocused (Vorta have poor visual acuity). Dukat wonders what he can hear. The rush of cold blood. A three-chambered heart. The Bird-of-Prey, on course back home.

“Weyoun,” Dukat repeats. He wants to eat his own tail. 

  
  


#

  
  


Weyoun is Weyoun 5. Dukat does not understand Vorta cloning doublethink: Weyoun refers to Weyouns 1-4 as separate people, but he also talks as if he was there on Vandros IV, and so on. He has intimate knowledge of Cardassian socio-political history, literature, and reproductive anatomy. He is excited to try kanar _,_ and a Human dish called _jambalaya_ , and he wants to see the ziggurat complex south of Lakat. 

He wants to commit genocide against the uncooperative factions of the Alpha Quadrant. The Dominion (yes, with Cardassia) will reach Sol, and Ferenginar, and Gideon. Weyoun explains each of these ambitions with leveled enthusiasm. _Apples_ and murder are _apples_ and _oranges._

It is as easy to like Weyoun as it would be to break every carbon-black bone in his body. 

At 0500 Dukat has been awake for thirty-four hours. He fucks Weyoun standing against the bulkhead, without speaking, and the pretense between them is immediate and as total as Weyoun, born from a tube. 

  
  


#

  
  


Weyoun likes _raktajino._ The Vorta sits cross-legged on the edge of the futon, holding a steaming mug in both hands. He is what the Cardassian Dukat would refer to as a ‘morning person.’ 

A smaller black box beside his carrier holds his clothes and a wooden comb and a datascreen, so he is toweled dry and dressed. The Cardassian Dukat is dead asleep in a heap of ratty Klingon quilt. The room reeks of sex and coffee.

 _He’s delightful,_ Weyoun thinks. _I’m happy, very happy, to be alive._

Two minutes more, and he’ll get up. He will introduce himself to the Cardassian Damar and to the Vorta Anqet 2. The morning will be spent familiarizing himself with the Bird-of-Prey: her helm, her weapons, her funny cloaking device. Lunch should be Federation field rations, which he’s looking forward to, and then he will return and have Dukat for dessert. 

_It’s going to be a nice time for the Dominion._

**Author's Note:**

> The term ‘skimmer’ comes from [Proof](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12172872), although I’m not sure if AlphaCygni described them: I’m imagining a hovercraft/glider combo roughly the size of a Cessna shithawk, painted white. 
> 
> I owe Cardassian reproductive anatomy to tinsnip (don’t we all?)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think in the comments :-)


End file.
